Part 2 of a continuing series on FBI records of a mobster.
The Gloucester-based swordfish boat Valhalla is one of the most storied episodes in Boston IRA history.
It’s also the rare case where the federal government was forced to pay out millions for John “Zip” Connolly’s deal with the devil, mobster James “Whitey” Bulger.
Connolly, 80, is back with his wife in Massachusetts after being granted a “compassionate release” from a Florida prison. He has multiple melanomas and diabetes and has about a year to live, prison officials say.
This all comes as the FBI slowly releases records of Connolly’s ties to Bulger under a Freedom of Information Act request filed by the Herald two years ago. The latest installment includes a brief summary of Bulger’s grand jury indictment for murder and extortion returned just weeks after he fled Boston in 1994. He was tipped off by Connolly allowing him to spend 16 years on the lam. Bulger was murdered in prison in 2018.
The FBI adds that 496 other pages sought by the Herald are deleted. No explanation is given.
“Why they are still redacting pages is curious,” said top Boston attorney Jeffrey Denner, who won a $3.1 million-plus settlement in 2018 from the feds for the family of one of Bulger’s murder victims who told police about the ill-fated voyage of the Valhalla.
“It was a very nasty time in federal-state history,” Denner said Monday. “Only a small percentage of federal officers were involved … but it was so intensely troubling the way the government was acting then.”
John McIntyre was tortured and killed by Bulger because he told police the story of the Valhalla after being busted in Quincy on a minor run-in with the law. Denner said Connolly tipped off Bulger in that case, too, and McIntyre paid the price.
“They killed him so badly. They tortured him,” Denner said. “His mother and brother were never the same.”
The Valhalla left Gloucester harbor in September of 1984 carrying 7 tons of weapons worth $1 million destined for the Irish Republican Army in Northern Ireland, according to the book “Black Mass.” The Valhalla met up with the Irish fishing boat Marita Ann to transfer the guns and turned back to Boston.
The Marita Ann was quickly seized and the Valhalla was discovered in Boston Harbor two weeks later following McIntyre’s arrest when he confessed to being on the boat.
An investigator who pieced together Valhalla’s route from “spare slips of paper tossed in the trash” said he recently watched the movie “Black Mass” and finally put together all the deceit and death.
“At that time, corruption in a number of federal agencies based in Boston was rampant,” the investigator told the Herald. “I rifled through the garbage bins of the Valhalla and found a lot of scrap paper filled with a bunch of seemingly random numbers.
“Scanning through these numbers I was able to plot the course of the Valhalla to the northwest coast of Ireland, had it milling around there for a few days, and then plotting its course back to Boston,” he added.
The fuel tanks, he said, were dry so they could hide the guns and ammunition destined for the IRA.
The FBI’s involvement, he added, and Connolly’s protection of Bulger still haunts him. He’s not alone.
“The FBI doesn’t want you to bring up the mud, but (Connolly) was the one who put himself in prison,” said Mary Callahan, who lost her husband to the Bulger gang because of the rogue FBI agent. “Now they are digging it up a little at a time again with these FBI records.”
